Paper

The computer still buzzes for no reason. Is it supposed to buzz? I tried fixing it last night but it just refuses to quit. Windows XP gleams from the dust encrusted monitor. If I part the curtains a bit, a patch of sunlight illuminates the screen and makes the dust more visible. They leap off the screen and swirl in majestic symphony in the air I breathe. But the light's still giving me a searing headache. I pull the curtains shut. Show over. The computer's not white anymore.

My hair's a mess. Whatever's left of it. Everyday I discover clumps of it adhering stubbornly to the pillow. The vein's back on my forehead and the scowl on my face never looked more spontaneous. I should've been an actor, God always said. But the spotlight would make me woozy. I haul myself off the bed. Fuck, I weigh a ton more than I used to. The cupboards are grey, it's how I like it. They conceal beneath their frozen veneer an array of essentials I hardly ever touch. The Navy Regatta hat I bought that I haven't worn since I stopped rowing. A gaudy shade of yellow on a warm pullover that's totally unnecessary in this weather. Seven wallets I bought in bulk that were meant to be presents for people I haven't met since. They peer at me through the slit of vision between the door and hollowed interior of the cupboard. They want to be let out like the neverending plume of smoke that wants to burn through my lungs every morning.

The reason pills make that tick-tack sound dancing inside the glass bottle is that there are too few of them. When there are more, they stick glumly to my palm with a resigned 'thum' when I turn the bottle over. In any case when I wash them down with water, things come back into focus with the shaking vigour of a blanket shook out in the heat. The room makes me claustrophobic so I pull the door shut as I leave it behind me, crushing my troubles in the vise-like impenetrability of my pigeon-hole room.

For some reason I'm heaving wearily as I ascend the granite staircase of the firm building. I make a mental note of the creatures around me, shuffling through sheaves of snow-white paper, tending boxes full of yellowed used paper, signing lined papers with their parker pens, and all the while sniveling closer to their imagined altars of success. What are we at the end of the day but a crushed and useless litter of paper that's worn it's usefulness?

My office is a corner cubicle on the eight floor. I use the stairs coz the closed metal doors of the elevator congested with work-mice known and unknown remind me of that dingy apartment room with its sundry demons, altogether familiar in their catastrophic fearfulness. I fix myself up in front of the mirror, pat my hair in place, pull my tie-knot up and tuck in the shirt. But what's this mark on my face? A dot of black on a pallid face. Scratch scratch scratch but it won't come off. A mole? No, it wasn't there before. I hack at it with nails I trimmed thrice last night. The central air conditioning tends to muffle the annoying chit-chat and clackity-clack of the keyboard. It also tends to amplify the pungent smell of sweaty socks. I try to ignore it but it wafts through the air like an indolent troll on a magic carpet sailing in the wind. This mole is beginning to anger me. I tear at my cheek and the skin comes apart in my hand and as I pull it gingerly off, God I want to scream but words can't give form to anguish and I'm crying as it peels right off the blank red expression on what used to be my face. Calm down. Your face is still there. I shut my eyelids down hard and when I open them, I stare back in pathetic exasperation for an instant and then am blank again. Mirrors, mirrors everywhere. In my head they jangle to a thousand pieces, nay, million and beads of condensation like sweat from my brow trickle down my nose off several pieces of glass to a rapidly rising floor. The troll seems to have awakened and is bellowing in fury and it reeks, it reeks. I stumble against a wooden desk laden with stationary someone put there last night and all I want to do is staple my arm to the wall so I don't stumble again. Water is a reverberating heap of phlegm in my lungs every time I cough and I can't spit it out coz I'm choking. Spit it out! Spit the choke out! Suddenly the world is a spherical orb of sweat hurtling toward a calm and placid lake and I'm on it, urging it on till I feel cold water splash about me like a million fairies showering tiny white dust making it glow. Stop making it glow! Glow away. Glow away from me. And I'm afraid to open my eyes coz if I do, it might peel away like old wallpaper from the used and weathered face of my wall.

When I pry them open, I remember them glowing. For an instant. But they did. I saw my eyes glowing. Slowly, in tune with the silent tide and ebb of slackening breath, the headache subsides. I can feel the vein on my forehead again but it has no power over me now. I try not to bite down on my tongue, but there's always a little blood...There's always blood.